You heard it here. I am the proverbial chicken, and I am running around without a head. Why? Let me tell you a little story first. My mom is Greek. She’s first generation. When she started kindergarten, she didn’t speak English, and she learned English via immersion in public school. She actually became an English teacher. My maternal great-grandmother lived with my mom, uncle, and grandparents. It was a different time and a lot simpler. That’s just what you did back then. There weren’t all the senior living options, long-term care insurance, and all the stuff to consider. Trust me on that one. My parents are at the point where we’re having to make some tough decisions.
But my great-yia yia lived with my mom’s family. They kept chickens. They had a garden. They lived in a city, but made some of the things we typically associate with rural life part of their urban life. If they were having chicken, my great-yia yia would wring the chicken’s neck, or sometimes she would take a little hatchet and do what one does with a chicken and a hatchet. My mom told me this: After the chicken lost its head, it would run around in the yard for a while. When I was little, I couldn’t wrap my head around this because, duh, the chicken had no head and couldn’t see where it was going. Did it run around in circles? Did it have some otherworldly ability to chase my mom and uncle? Did it run in a straight line? Did it run around for seconds, minutes, hours? I think its route was random and very happenstance and only lasted as long as there was ADP/ATP and troponin to fuel the chicken’s cells.
Right now, I have taken on some of the chicken’s situation, though my head is still firmly attached to the rest of me. I am in the throes of marketing and promotion and publicity for “It Could Have Been Murder;” I’m working through a LOT of edits for “Such a Fantastic Girl;” I’m writing “Crazy Murdering B*tches;” and then I have a couple little side projects. One of the side projects is a collection of short stories, which tend to trend toward flash fiction, and the other project is a novel I’m co-writing with the very talented Thomas Wetzel, called “The Effing Pool Boys,” which is going to be a very fun caper. Percolating in the back of my brain are four other books, two of which re-visit Diamond Teams–one will be a prequel, and the other will be a sequel. The other two books are going to be full of intrigue, and I’m very excited to get those books going, but there’s only so much time in the day.
Hence, chicken running around without its head. That’s me.
On a side note: My grandfather had the most beautiful heavily accented English, and I didn’t always understand him. He was a lovely, gentle man, with very kind eyes that held nothing but love for his wife, children, mother-in-law, eventually a son- and daughter-in-law, five grandchildren, and his life in America. In my short fiction, there are several stories that focus on adult children facing the hard truths of aging parents and the struggle of doing right by them. There are also other stories, like the angst Mr. Snuffleupagus feels toward Kermit the Frog. There’s also a fun little story of one of Santa’s elves who works down Santa’s Naughty List.
And, in case you’re wondering: I don’t eat chicken.